“Daniel”
50 pullups
400 m run
21 Thrusters #95/65
800 m run
21 Thrusters
400 m run
50 pullupsI was reading an article about the Stanford strength and conditioning coach, Shannon Turley. Since taking over the strength and conditioning program, Stanford went from going 1-11 in 2006 with a football program that was literally going nowhere, to winning the Rose bowl in the 2012-13 season. A lot went into making a change like this happen, but one of the most significant came in how Coach Turley helped shift the players shift from an ‘outcome focus’ to a ‘process focus’. What’s the difference, you may ask…

Outcome focus means your attention and focus is fixed on the outcome – the win or loss of a game for a football team, and for the rest of us, things like whether you get that job, lose the weight, achieve the goal. Most of the things that must happen for an outcome to be ‘successful’ are things that on a day-to-day basis are outside of your control. Not so with process focus. When you’re focused on the process, you are focused, like a laser beam, on the things that you can have a DIRECT impact on each and every day – like what time you get up in the morning, what you eat for breakfast, what clothes you wear (are you dressed for success), and your mental attitude in practice (or your CrossFit class). Process focus brings an incredibly empowering shift to your life – allowing you to focus in on doing things each day related to your process with impeccable integrity – with zero regard for the outcome (something over which you have no real control anyway). It’s not easy and requires discipline, confidence, and a little bit of faith, but the payoff, as was the case at Stanford, can be huge.

How might you shift from an outcome focus to process focused and how might this improve your attitude and daily life?